Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ - Died 8th June 1889

The Catholic litany of famous converts seems never ending and Father Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ must appear close to the top, certainly of any nineteenth century version of such a list.

Born in the East End of London of a wealthy father, Gerard was the eldest of eight children. The family were strong High Church Anglicans and steeped in literature and the arts.

He soon developed an interest in art and painting in particular (his Great Uncle was the famous artist, Richard James Lane).

 And it seemed that his nephew was also destined for a career in the arts. When the family moved to the more salubrious surroundings of Hampstead Heath, the ten year old Gerard found inspiration in Keats poetry and developed a precocious talent for prose.

At Balliol College, Oxford, (1863-67) he studied classics and formed a friendship with Robert Bridges, a fellow poet who, in fact, was destined to become Poet Laureate.  By the summer of 1866 he had made up his mind to convert to Catholicism and travelled to Birmingham to consult the man who had travelled the road to Rome very famously before him, Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman.

"Glory be to God for dappled things...."

Things moved on apace and Gerard was received by the Cardinal,into the Church on 21^st October 1866; within eighteen months he had resolved to enter the priesthood and, as a sign of commitment, gave up writing poetry and made a bonfire of all his poetical works, resigning himself to a life in imitation of Christ.

However, after a short period he reconciled his creative talent and resumed writing verse. He studied at St Beuno’s College in North Wales and so began his fascination with the Welsh language (he had already formed an affinity for Old English, a close relation to the Welsh). The repetitive sounds of Welsh were, it is believed, a major influence on the alliterative and onomatopoeic distinctive style that he developed in his main works.

Ordained into the Jesuit Order in 1877 he began a series of appointments, teaching first in Chesterfield, moving to Mount Street, London as a curate before accepting similar posts in Oxford, Manchester, Sheffield, Stoneyhurst in Lancashire and, finally, University College, Dublin.

Never blessed with a strong constitution, Dublin and its heavy workload began to have a bad effect on his health and by 1889 he had contracted typhoid fever and died. His last words were: “I am so happy, I am so happy, I loved my life”.

There is some speculation that his mood swings throughout his brief life were as a result of depression, what is termed today, Bipolar Disorder.

He died 8^th June 1889 and is buried at Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery.



The Kestrel, country name....Windhover





The Windhover

                                                 To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
      dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
      Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
      As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
      Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing. 

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
      Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

      No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
      Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Is it my imagination or is there an element that could be found in any of the poems of Dylan Thomas here?


Posted by Richard Collins - Linen on the Hedgerow

The Sistine Chapel - in the depths of Wales!

             

Beautiful frescoes adorn the walls and ceiling, stone communion rails define the sanctuary, marble pillars line the sides of the chapel and a fine array of brass candlesticks furnish the altar.

All is still, all is quiet but all is not real. In fact it is all false or, to use the language of the art world it is all “faux”.

This chapel is set in what, from 1942 until 1945, was an Italian Prisoner of War camp. It is housed, in fact, in a rusting and ancient Nissan hut, surrounded by others of the same kind that once housed up to 1,000 prisoners far from their Tuscan, Umbrian and Calabrian homes and far from their loved ones.

Most of these men were Catholics and many of them had the innate Italian sense of art and sacred art especially. Once a hut had been assigned to them as a chapel they set about creating a real chapel such as they might have worshipped in at home.

Paper was pulped into papiere mache and moulded into columns that were then painted and marbling introduced with the aid of a large feather, corned beef cans were saved and cleaned before being hammered out flat and then fashioned into ‘flat’ candlesticks, painted yellow for a brass effect and given a strut at the back, from three feet away you would swear you were looking at antique brass candle holders.

Concrete was poured into crude moulds and, before setting completely was released and then ‘distressed’ so that it looked like 17^th century carved stonework. These were the altar rails.

Then, these resourceful men saved up and harvested whatever vegetable and vegetation scraps they could find and made dyes of all shades. These were to be the paints used on the plasterwork of the ceiling and walls; the masterpiece being the fresco of The Last Supper above the altar.

All of this was carried out with love and concern for what was to take place in this very humble hut. It was accomplished to the glory of God and their reward was the Mass in Latin as if they were back home with wives, sweethearts and parents.

Today, the chapel still stands on the site of the original camp in the small Ceredigionshire village of Henllan; a mile or two outside the market town of Newcastle Emlyn. Time and the Welsh elements are taking their toll. The owner of the site has done his best to preserve what is there but, slowly rust is taking hold and damp is penetrating the plaster. The hut is now shrouded in plastic sheeting to keep out the worst of the weather but, unless urgent steps are taken this splendid piece of Catholic history will crumble into oblivion.

What can be done? In Wales the organisation for the preservation of historic buildings is called Cadw but it would be fruitless to pour cash into restoring the chapel in its present location, it is just too isolated.

All beautiful within - the Italian PoW Chapel

I would like to see the Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagan’s near Cardiff, in conjunction with Cadw, take this chapel on board and, in their normal fashion, remove it in sections and re-build it on what is one of the best museum sites in Great Britain. It would not cost much (compared with some of the relocations St Fagan’s has tackled). But it does require the will to make it happen.

Posted by Richard Collins of Linen on the Hedgerow.